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Indiana Magazine of HistoryAdlai Stevenson of Illinois: The Life Of Adlai E. StevensonJohn Bartlow MartinBook ReviewEdward H. ZiegnerIndiana Magazine of HistoryBloomington, INIndiana University Department of History in cooperation with the Indiana
Historical Society1976472380-381

Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson had a splendid idea for his 1952 campaign: appeal to
the best in people. He told Archibald MacLeish, one of his speech writers: "I get so sick
of the everlasting appeals to the cupidity and prejudice of every group which characterizes our
political campaigns. There is something finer in people; they know that they owe something, too. I
should like to try, at least, to appeal to their sense of obligation as well as their
avarice" (p. 653). He did just that, at least in most
of his speeches in his first campaign for the White House. That he did was due in large measure to
the hard work and brilliance of a small group of speechwriters, one of whom was John Bartlow Martin.

Martin, who grew up in Indianapolis, went to DePauw University, and prior to World War II worked on the IndianapolisTimes, has written this exceptionally well done political biography. A gifted
writer and reporter with an especially skillful eye for detail, he has drawn a candid, sometimes
brutally honest portrait of a Democratic politician who stirred the American intellectual and
academic community as no one had since Woodrow Wilson.

The first of two volumes, the book covers the period from Stevenson's birth in 1900 through
the 1952 presidential campaign. Martin shows that Stevenson was a great man, although not wholly the
man the public believed him to be. He was wealthy but parsimonious, haggling with a tenant over
$12.50 in rent. Although he appeared reluctant to get into politics, that was a false
picture. He wanted to get in for years before he did and constantly angled for political
opportunities. He appeared indecisive, vacillating, even timid. But often he had made his mind up
long before, merely playing the public role of indecision for effect.

His marriage broken and ending in divorce in 1949, his first year as governor of Illinois, he carried on simultaneous love affairs with Alicia Patterson and Dorothy Fosdick, the
daughter of Harry Emerson Fosdick. Despite the admiration intellectuals lavished on him, he rarely
read a book. He was a late bloomer, a man who matured slowly as he wandered away from the life of a
LaSalle Street lawyer and suburban commuter in prewar Chicago to win a landslide victory as governor of Illinois in 1948 and the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956.

His speeches, letters, and public statements were often moving, graceful, and witty. They were not as
spontaneous as it seemed. He worked like the very devil to get them just right. He never achieved
the presidency; he might not have been a good one had he made it to the White House. But he elevated
the quality of American politics.

Martin's first volume is superlative; it whets the appetite for the second.